Kenneth Rijock

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY ASSERTS IT WILL SUE UNITED KINGDOM

Lord Balfour's letter to Lord Rothschild

The Palestinian Authority has publicly stated that it will bring a civil suit against the United Kingdom, for damages, because of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which favored a National Homeland for the Jewish [Hebrew] People. The PA has announced that the Declaration was responsible for the establishment of the State of Israel, upon land that the PA claims belongs to Arabs.

Obviously, nobody in Ramallah was paying attention in law school; otherwise, they would know that Sovereign Immunity, also known as Crown Immunity, prohibits civil suits, with only extremely rare exceptions. They should also know that the Balfour Declaration, which was codified in the San Remo Conference, by the League of Nations, and later the United Nations, was adopted by that global community of states and nations. The Jewish claim to the region is continuous, and over 3000 years old. The PA only came into being in the 1960s, and its people only moved into what is now Israel in the early 1900s.

One additional point, in 1947, the UN presented a partition plan for the then-British Mandate, but it was rejected by all the Arab states. Therefore, the Balfour Declaration, and its progeny, are still valid international law. 77% of the British Mandate was spun off, as an Arab state; it is called Jordan.

I bring up what is obviously a political ploy, with no basis in either law or fact, because if a civil suit is filed against the UK, it may prompt British regulatory agencies to take a fresh look at high-value accounts held by Palestinians in UK banks, to insure that the account holders are not corrupt PEPs, or are members of Hamas, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, terrorist organizations. UK compliance officers would do well to, early on check out their affluent Palestinian clients, lest they be embarrassed later on, when regulators find
AML/CFT deficiencies.